Crews contain 311-acre Southern Calif. wildfire

Firefighters have fully contained a 311-acre wildfire that at one point came dangerously close to homes in Southern California.

The Riverside County Fire Department said crews tended to hot spots amid gusty Santa Ana winds, extremely dry conditions and temperatures in the 80s on Saturday.

The fire began Thursday in the heavily vegetated Santa Ana River bottom in and around Rancho Jurupa Regional Park.

At its peak, the fire downed power lines and burned near a residential area, prompting a call for voluntary evacuations. That order was lifted and electricity was restored by Friday morning, county fire officials said.

On Thursday, a backyard trailer went up in flames about a quarter-mile from the fire lines in a neighborhood where embers were flying, but fire officials couldn't immediately say whether the wildfire embers sparked it.

No injuries were reported.

Southern California's Santa Ana winds are most often associated with fall but can occur through winter. They are created when air moving clockwise around an area of surface high pressure in the interior of the West flows down through passes and canyons in the region's mountains, gaining speed and warmth as they blow from a northeasterly direction toward the Pacific Ocean.